#wasgentle

this is such an in-depth, excellent question i’m almost angry at you for sending it !!

lucy has two very different reactions to this during the golden age vs during england.

in narnia, susan gains a reputation as the most beautiful woman in the world. which lucy is inclined to agree with ( supportive sisters !! ) and it doesn’t bother her, in the sense of making her feel inferior because lucy has her own reputation as a valiant knight, a HERO, etc, and in narnia a woman’s worth isn’t dictated by her beauty. so during the golden age it doesn’t bother her in the slightest, because she knows her own worth to narnia.

when back in england things get more complicated to say the least. lucy is a little girl again, a little girl who is constantly getting into trouble for things she doesn’t understand / for things she doesn’t think are wrong. she is constantly being compared to susan ( why can’t you be more like your sister?  /  you know susan never did this /  etc. ), and the comparison is always done in a way that makes it  obvious that susan is the Good One and lucy is the Bad One. so, when their mother ( and teachers and, well, everyone ) start to call susan The Pretty One, it becomes clear to lucy that she’s, well, not pretty. now, lucy has never been the sort to worry about her appearance, or how people view her appearance, and she’d agree with everyone that susan is the pretty one !!!  her sister is beautiful !!! but now suddenly it’s important, because the way people talk about it is like if lucy was pretty, then everything else about her that she gets in trouble for would magical disappear or become better. she’d be accepted by everyone ( her parents, her teachers, her classmates who, by and large, bully her, etc ) and things wouldn’t, well, be so difficult for her; england would be easy like how it is for susan, like how narnia was.

this is why she’s tempted in dawn treader by the spell in the book that grants beauty beyond compare ( well beyond the fact that that’s the entire point of the spell ). it’s not the beauty that she’s tempted by, exactly, it’s the respect / love she’d get as a result. in england, it doesn’t feel like she gets any of that, and the only way she can get it is through becoming prettier aka becoming more like susan. to lucy, it seems like susan can just waltz through life perfectly composed  ---  she always knows what to do, the right things to say, people always approve of her, always respect her and treat her like an adult. meanwhile, lucy is constantly being punished, told off, and in england she’s told time and time again that she’s wrong ( through punishment at schools, through the bullies at school, through her parents, through comparisons to her siblings --- notably susan ).  

after the events of dawn treader, when aslan tells her she’s to get a life in england because england is where she will remain, lucy steels herself to the future. dawn treader is basically her coming of age story, and when she gets back to england there would be a noticeable difference in her demeanor; she’s still lucy, of course, but you can tell that she’s matured some. 

yet the comparisons to susan still continue, the difference now being that lucy isn’t as sensitive to them as she used to be. she doesn’t care about societal acceptance the way susan does  ---  she likes who she is, she has plans, she knows aslan loves her, and that’s all that matters to her. yet that doesn’t mean the comparisons don’t hurt or affect her relationship with susan. even before susan starts rejecting narnia, lucy starts taking things susan says very sensitively  ---  any ‘advice’ susan may give lucy, lucy would take as harsh criticism and would react poorly too, no matter how tender the advice is. lucy would be very sensitive to susan trying to “control” her, as in susan trying to make lucy like her ( an unfounded worry, really, but since everyone else is trying to get lucy to be more like susan, surely susan herself is trying to do that too ? ), which basically means that lucy would reject / react poorly to susan trying to mother her in any way like susan always has.

lucy represents absolute, pure faith. susan represents societal expectations / approval / status. the two can’t exist together --- they are paradoxical. so, of course, they are going to be at odds with one another. when susan starts rejecting aslan and narnia, lucy tries to bring susan back and when that doesn’t work, lucy then rejects susan. she feels like she has to in order to remain loyal to aslan ( .... and that susan deserves it, the traitor !! ), but in rejecting susan, lucy is rejecting the whole of society and society’s ideals / expectations. no longer, lucy concerns herself with what people/society say she should do  ;  she doesn’t go to dances, she doesn’t date, she doesn’t conform to typical femininity, etc. she does what she knows aslan wants her to and focuses on doing what she has to in order to accomplish that. she no longer cares about being the pretty one.

tl;dr: the comparisons to susan, whether direct or intentional or not, are the first strike in crumbling of the sisters’ relationship that happens in england, even if it initially did not cause much of a rift at the time they started.  

“ can’t you just say what it is that keeps you from sleeping ? “